BOOK REVIEW

Jerry Harkins

BERLIN 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, And The Most Dangerous Place On Earth, Frederick Kempe, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2011. 579 pages. $29.95


This is actually two books for the price of one. The first is a carefully researched, beautifully written account of the crisis that culminated in the erection of the infamous wall around the perimeter of East Berlin. The second is a diatribe of revisionist history concerning the intelligence, morality and, in some ways, even the patriotism of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The two books are only barely related. The first one is an outstanding contribution to Cold War Studies if only because it brings together a great deal of new information and contemporary perspective for the first time. The second, blessedly much shorter, is a hatchet job.

Frederick Kempe despises JFK whom he portrays as stupid, indecisive, drug addicted and criminally promiscuous. The President gets 90% of the blame for bringing the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Walter Ulbricht is a brilliant strategist with a very understandable problem. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev is a master of psychological warfare whose only objectives are to improve Soviet economic performance and retain his own power. Konrad (Der Alte) Adenauer, Charles (Le Grand) de Gaulle, Lucius Clay and Dean Acheson are poor souls burdened with an inexperienced American President who refuses to allow them to decide how much American blood should be shed in defense of Berlin. All of this is, at best, simplistic.

Kempe is of the zero tolerance school. He has no sympathy whatever for either the overwhelming significance of the decisions that had to be made or for the uncertainty that invariably surrounds momentous events. In every case there is a single right answer and in every case Kennedy chooses a wrong one. Nor is this perfect hindsight. The right answer was always self-evident to all right thinkers. The major mistake was not standing up to Khrushchev’s bullying which was always mere bluffing. But ‘bullying’ is a polite way to describe the Premier’s antics and rhetoric. Like his mentor Stalin, Comrade K was or at least appeared to be certifiably crazy. This is the world leader who came to the United Nations in 1960 and started banging his shoe on his desk to protest a speech by the Philippine delegate. Kempe and many other think he was merely a shrewd peasant. With the fate of the world at stake, however, indecision does not seem beyond all understanding and caution reads as the only sane approach.

The history of the era must proceed from three unarguable facts:

• The erection of the Berlin Wall marked the obvious defeat of Communism as a rational economic system. As Kennedy said in his famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech, “There are some who say Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.”

• Kennedy knew and publicly admitted that he had suffered a serious setback in Berlin. But the lessons were taken to heart and contributed to what was arguably the most important victory of the Cold War in the Cuban Missile Crisis of the following year.

• Ultimately, the Wall came tumbling down in the aftermath of the fall of Communism itself. Much of the credit must go to conservative American presidents, especially Nixon and Reagan. But the global situation that prompted the end of the Cold War was set in motion by Kennedy and furthered by his successors. Kempe thinks the Communist downfall might have come faster had Kennedy not backed down in 1961 but that is pure speculation.

A reader can’t be sure that Kempe is even aware of his bias against Kennedy. Like all revisionists, he must take the view that the rest of us were hoodwinked into feeling good about America under Kennedy. Like all revisionism, it’s annoying whether it’s right or wrong. And it surely is bias. In his acknowledgments, Kempe, a son of pre-war German immigrants, says, “It is my parents who instilled in me an indignation both toward those who imposed and those who tolerated the oppressive system that encased seventeen million of their fellow Germans…” My own biases tell me that the Germans had no right to such feelings.

How bad is the bias? At the end of the disastrous Vienna summit, Khrushchev blusters about signing a separate peace treaty with East Germany in December. Kennedy says, “If that’s true, it’s going to be a cold winter.” Kempe snidely remarks, “…he got even that wrong. His troubles would come much earlier.” Even that!